Voyage to the Remote Phoenix Islands

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Humans have settled Orona Island more than once. It is a 5-by-2-mile well-treed ring-shaped atoll with a large central lagoon and limited fresh water. Tukabu Teroroko, director of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) for Kiribati, pointed out stone enclosures from prehistoric Polynesian settlements. He said that there were settlements here in the 1930s, the 1950s, and most recently from 1996 to 2005. Some 200 people lived here to fish and produce copra (coconut meat), then left, returning to Kiribati when they could no longer support themselves here. The island will now remain uninhabited. (Photo by Larry Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)